That being said t00l does have a valid point about mission times, but then again he well knows that flying a Hydran escort on AOTK II he was just about able to equate these times. 5 gatling phasers can wreck havok. With that type of issue in mind I had the statement in my system about the specialty ships being considered larger hull classes, this would alleviate some of the concern. If you want to starcastle vs ai, you deserve the slow times you recieve in my opinion.

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762_XC

Every race has flippers, but only one race has a 6-rack flipper @74 BPV.

What that means is a high frequency of one-pass kills, and 1:40 missions, even without using your one SP. Even other droners do not do this as well. The D5D draws higher AI; the NCD draws higher AI and can't HET. The CAD can HET but draws horrendous AI.

Hydran escorts make good flippers, relative to other ships in the Royal Navy. But they need at least 2 passes to kill any ship unless they are lucky enough to draw a very small ship (infrequent). Fighters can help at the risk of making you more supply-depndent. Mission times usually run 2 1/2 to 3 minutes on average for a 1v1. Rarely you get the 1:40.

Because of this, Mirak (especially in early-mid) have a map effect all out of proportion to their player numbers. We've seen this since the very first Taldren server went up.

Don't disagree in general with what you say t00l but the Hydran escorts are a bit faster, I timed you on AOTK II and you were averaging 2 min 5 seconds, still not 1 min 40 but a bit closer, and Die Hard tells me he can do 2.5 min missions in the Ranger, a vanilla ship. Not all races can do this I realize, why Ive supported plasma races having the basic PFT in their list at the beginning of early with the basic plasma PFs, so that they had a hex flipper.

There are other resons why Kzin pilots tend to have more effect as well. We tend to fly alone, we are coordinated, we don't try to save our hull to much or take time to capture ai, we know what targets are achievable and which are not and don't waste time on those, we set up our targets beforehand, we are good at deepstriking, we tend not to spend excessive amounts of time organizing gangbangs on our foes (although we sometimes have), and we make our foes react to us whenever possible.

So yes we can run missions twice as fast as some foes, but we likely have 3 times the effect, it goes beyond the mission times.

***there are pilots in just about every races that have these effects due to good organization and strategy, these I by no means wish to imply that they are purely Kzinti qualities, nor are they limited to those equipped with Kzinti ships.

I can name a few pilots of other races that muliply their effect if you wish, even a few plasma chuckers. These are the guys I have to kep and eye one when they are the enemy

Don't disagree in general with what you say t00l but the Hydran escorts are a bit faster, I timed you on AOTK II and you were averaging 2 min 5 seconds, still not 1 min 40 but a bit closer, and Die Hard tells me he can do 2.5 min missions in the Ranger, a vanilla ship. Not all races can do this I realize, why Ive supported plasma races having the basic PFT in their list at the beginning of early with the basic plasma PFs, so that they had a hex flipper.me a few pilots of other races that muliply their effect if you wish, even a few plasma chuckers. These are the guys I have to kep and eye one when they are the enemy

Ask Icehawk, the low DV plasma carriers make excellent hex-fillppers, that was kind of what I was going for when I put them in the mod.

Hardly a flame war, but I do believe we have drifted a bit off your topic DH, apologies for that.

I respect t00ls honor and integrity as a player and as a forum admin, I'd never question those traits of his, we just want different things from a Dynaverse server and if you can manage to please us both you will have a winner. I do like using t00l as a sounding board for ideas for this very reason, he often has some very valid points which I might overlook from my own personally biased point of view. Its just when he makes statements such as "only the Mirak would play on such a Server" or the like that I find his attitudes inappropriate for a civil discussion and start being a smartass myself.

762 dose have a valid point. But we do more with our DF's then just hex flip. I for one enjoy flying solo in my DF. I know for a fact that 95% of the time when I'm caught by a opposing player I'm going to go BOOM. It's that 5% of the time when I suprise some people in CA's that make it worth it

I don't have a problem with the 1 hour hex ban if I have been kicked out of a hex. As 762 pointed out, I just go and work on another part of the map.. Or as what happened on the last Slave Girls. We were just getting Hammered on the front lines and it was something like 20 coalition to 3 alliance on. I just took my trusty DF on a Deep strike to find the Klingon Home world. After a few minutes I found that I was being chased around Klingon space by a CV, and 2 CA's. 3 less capital ships on the front lines

The way to get by the 3 ships fleeting together and driving people off is simple, I tried to set it up for KCW, but didn't go far enoughMany,many, more VC hexes.Right now most of the last servers have been fought over control of 5-10 hexes.Given the amount of time that it takes to get secure LOS to the hexes , and the numbers of players on after the first weekend, it's rare to be fighting for control of more than 3 hexes or so on any given night. If -instead of having between 5- 10 major VP hexes to fight over,a server had 30 or 40, each worth fewer VP, and having less DV in the hexes things would change. A 3 ship fleet could knock someone out of a hex, but they'd have another 10-15 hexes to hit.A three ship fleet would still be a powerhouse, but a force organized around individual pilots wouldbe far more nimble in attacking objective hexes.

Given lower DV's, slightly smaller maps,and many more VP hexes you'll minimize the trend to fleet up and likley increase 1v1 PVP's.

One of the things I really like about KCW is the vast amount of empty(neutral) space yet it is a small map. Each house gets to more or less mould their territory shape to what they need. Each house gets near equal chance to "run for the cash" so to speak. And I also agree that with more target hexes out there, well, if you cant get to that one, there are many others out ther to get to. And to get to them quicker is not 3 men teams.

The way to get by the 3 ships fleeting together and driving people off is simple, I tried to set it up for KCW, but didn't go far enoughMany,many, more VC hexes.Right now most of the last servers have been fought over control of 5-10 hexes.Given the amount of time that it takes to get secure LOS to the hexes , and the numbers of players on after the first weekend, it's rare to be fighting for control of more than 3 hexes or so on any given night. If -instead of having between 5- 10 major VP hexes to fight over,a server had 30 or 40, each worth fewer VP, and having less DV in the hexes things would change. A 3 ship fleet could knock someone out of a hex, but they'd have another 10-15 hexes to hit.A three ship fleet would still be a powerhouse, but a force organized around individual pilots wouldbe far more nimble in attacking objective hexes.

Given lower DV's, slightly smaller maps,and many more VP hexes you'll minimize the trend to fleet up and likley increase 1v1 PVP's.

762_XC

If -instead of having between 5- 10 major VP hexes to fight over,a server had 30 or 40, each worth fewer VP, and having less DV in the hexes things would change. A 3 ship fleet could knock someone out of a hex, but they'd have another 10-15 hexes to hit.

This would make the disengagement rule (and PvP) almost totally ineffective. It only has an effect now if there are bottlenecks on the server where hex flippers must go. If you homogenize the map, it just becomes a flip-fest with no strategy.

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762_XC

FYI Chuut, at the time you were clocking me on AOTK2 I was flying an HR w/ 6 St-2, a combo only available from 2270-2272. This is far better than what we usually flip with because you can get 6 Stinger-2 @ 95 BPV. On the Mirak front I was drawing FFK's and the occasional DD and getting 1-pass kills almost all of the time. In '73 the HR+ obsoletes it and you start drawing war cruisers with nasty PD, throwing the whole thing off.

The RN does not normally get one pass kills, and has to replace fighters more often. With RA gatlings and 6 x Ph2 it is one of the most BORING ships I have ever flown!

-instead of having between 5- 10 major VP hexes to fight over,a server had 30 or 40, each worth fewer VP, and having less DV in the hexes things would change. A 3 ship fleet could knock someone out of a hex, but they'd have another 10-15 hexes to hit.

OK, here's something that may be attainable (stems from Bonk's idea of using the split-mission bugs to attain multiple DV shifts). Don't get your hopes up, there's not even a proof of concept yet, but it may be doable:

Right now only the host returns the win/loss DV claim - we might be able to rig it so that at the end of PvP battles multiple different players send won/loss claims (as happens with some of the split missions). Maybe. If it doesn't work then the mess it creates should be pretty spectacular

EDIT: maybe I need to stick a couple more mights ifs and maybes in there dave

I have a gf configurable PvP DV shift test ready on The Forge right now... Not sure it will work, but theoretically it should, its a bit of a kludge but I can refine it further if this works. (It would be more complicated to account for 2vs1s etc but possible, for now it should just detect PvP vs AI/Coop battles.)